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Balance des blancs

Balance des blancs

Silencers consists of France’s much acclaimed pianist Benoit Delbecq, Norwegian guitarist Kim Myhr, french percussionist Toma Gouband and trumpeter Nils Ostendorf from Berlin. The quartet has played numerous concerts together since 2006, and Balance des blancs is their long awaited debut release. Kim Myhr approached Delbecq during a parisian sojourn in the summer of 2006, and Benoit later said it was like meeting a musical cousin. Six months later, Silencers played their first concert in Paris. The four musicians have slowly taken their time to develop the ensemble sound. The result is an astonishingly rich ensemble with an exciting new world of sounds. The music itself flows dexteriously between fragile sounds and large, open spaces to more densely articulated structures. The minute attention to detail attests to the sensitivity of the musicians: every little sound is important and has the potential to lead the music in new directions.

Benoit Delbecq is a highly acclaimed french pianist.His latest trio and solo cds were given “best of 2010” in both New York Times and Le Monde. Kim Myhr is a guitarist with a steadily growing reputation around the world, as part of MURAL, his work for Trondheim Jazzorkester and many other projects. Toma Gouband is releasing his first solo percussion cd on Evan Parker’s label Psi this autumn. His unique use of rocks, stones and flora adds a very strong color to the Silencers’ sound. Nils Ostendorf is a trumpetplayer based in Berlin, involved in many projects there and is also producer/composer for Thomas Ostermeier’s theatre plays at the Schaubühne.

The Silencers is a fresh wind in improvised music, and they keep puzzling audiences with their forceful, yet soft and strangely moving music.

Benoit Delbecq - Piano, prepared piano

Kim Myhr - guitar, resonant objects

Nils Ostendorf - trumpet

Toma Gouband - percussion

Reviews

I admit, glancing at the instrumental line-up, I was a bit fearful of a kind of free-jazz/eai balancing act, the sort of thing that leaves some amount of frustration one way or the other. Well, it is, kind of, but achieves, at least on occasion, a rather amazing amount of success. The quartet (Benoit Delbecq, prepared piano; Kim Myhr, guitar, resonant objects; Nils Ostendorf, trumpet; Toma Gouband, percussion) manage, at their best, to create a music that strikes me as similar to what Don Cherry's Eternal Rhythm band might have done if somehow transported intact to 2010. They manage to mix abstraction with implied melodic and rhythmic content in a way that's not disingenuous or cutesy, the prepared piano referencing, inevitably, gamelan but also mbira. If this occurred consistently, we'd have a truly stellar album, but the four also fall into some meandering («En Turbulence»), not terribly but routine in aspect though that too picks up a head of steam midway through. I would have liked more focus but the group gels pretty well and creates an individual sound that's enticing. Curious to hear where they go from here

Fans of French pianist Benoît Delbecq should be cautious, because the pianist has played in many styles over the years, but on this album he dives deep into the sonic unknowns of his instrument, and is joined by Kim Myhr on guitar and resonant objects, Nils Ostendorf on trumpet and Toma Gouband on percussion.

Any listener without knowledge of the subgenre will really have a hard time to tell which instruments are used on this album, on which the subtle and lightest of touches make the instruments and strings resonate. I rarely use the liner notes to describe the music, but the description is a good one : «The music itself flows dexteriously between fragile sounds and large, open spaces to more densely articulated structures. The minute attention to detail attests to the sensitivity of the musicians: every little sound is important and has the potential to lead the music in new directions».

It is no surprise that the album's title is «Balance des Blancs» (white balance) a photographic term for the various shades of white that can be given to a picture. Our eye perceives all these whites as white, but when put next to each other, the differences become apparent.